Buck's Blog

A number of people have agreed to develop supplements for Combat Patrol(TM).  Supplements in active development are Napoleonic Wars, The Falklands, several British colonial periods, and modern Afghanistan and Iraq.  Several of the supplements have elements common to each other.  For instance, several of these periods require rules for close formations and cavalry.  To help ensure that these supplements are consistent with each other and the intent of the base rules, I hosted a play test day in my gaming room.  We had initially hoped to get in three games, but ended up only running two.

Everyone converged on the “war room” at 0900, but we spent the better part of two hours just talking about Duncan’s Napoleonic supplement, how to deal with closed order troops, cavalry, charging, etc.  It was a good session and set the stage for a successful play test.

I have found that a play test event like this needs to be a small group of the right folks who are okay with changing the rules on the fly, can offer suggestions that remain in keeping with the tone and intent of the base rules, understand the desire for simplicity and consistency, etc.  In this case I only invited those folks who were interested in writing a Combat Patrol(TM) supplement.  To me it was important that I got everyone on the same sheet of music.

Our intent with this supplement — and all of them really — is to change as little as possible from the base WWII rules.  There needs to be a compelling reason to make a change or addition for period feel.  Otherwise, we want to make sure that supplements are as consistent with the base rules and with each other as possible.

Our intent was to test as many aspects of Duncan’s supplement as possible.  One of the reasons to select a play test group carefully, is that you also need folks who won’t get too wrapped around the axel about trying to win the game or scenario anachronisms.  In the case of the photo (above), we used Mexican lancers as part of the British force, because those are the only lancers Duncan had in 28mm, and we wanted to test the lancer modifiers to the basic melee rules.

In order to test a wide swath of the rules, we had lancers, regular infantry, Rifles, hussars, etc.  The scenario involved a small British detachment defending the house at the top of the picture with the rest of the British riding to their rescue as the French try to seize it.

In advance of Chris’ farmhouse defenders, Chris had deployed a section of infantry in open order in the woods to slow down Zeb’s French.  Zeb advanced slowly through the woods in formed lines, while Chris spread out in open order.  Eventually Chris was driven from the woods.  One of his soldiers was left behind accidentally as most of the section fled the woods and ran toward the farm yard.  Once the “rear guard” was out of command radius, be became “pinned,” and Chris couldn’t extract him, but the figure, who we dubbed “Crazy Jenkins” held of several of Zeb’s attacks for several turns, slowing the French advance.

As a major focus of this play test session was to test the cavalry rules, Zeb and I conspired to create a cavalry battle in the center of the table.  Unfortunately as my lancers advanced and deployed, Zeb activated first and charged my lancers with his hussars.  As luck would have it, he was able to gain impetus and I was caught stationary.  The results were ugly for me.

Duncan’s intent was for these melees to become confused fur balls that would take a turn to two to resolve.  Our thinking is that much of the confusion of a melee is generally abstracted away at higher levels of abstraction, but we want this to be explicit in Combat Patrol(TM): Napoleonic Wars.  You can see elements to three cavalry units in this picture:  Zeb’s French hussars are in the center and left, my lancers are in the center, and my hussars are toward the bottom.

Slowly my numerical advantage over Zeb begin to tell, and he collected a lot of morale markers (the pile of green chips).  His cavalry scattered, and I moved to reorganize my cavalry and work around the exposed flank of the French infantry.

I attacked this French infantry unit on the flank and rear, but the French passed their Reaction check and were allowed to face their second rank to the rear.  The results were ugly for my cavalry.  While we still need to tinker with the modifiers to melee a bit, in general, the new rules for close order vs. open order, cavalry in melee, and cavalry vs. infantry seem to work well.  We are still thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of being in close order.

Duncan has come up with a mechanic that I like for cavalry.  There is no charge bonus, per se.  Cavalry must spend the last four inches of its move going straight ahead in order to receive an impetus bonus in the melee.  Remember:  this is a skirmish game, not a tactical game.  In my “charge” around flank of Duncan’s infantry, I did not have impetus, which hurt me in the subsequent melee.  I think it worked pretty well.

I had smashed my cavalry against Zeb’s cavalry and Duncan’s infantry, and Duncan and Zeb still had two untouched sections of infantry.  Chris was is sad shape in the farm yard with Zeb’s battered by still good infantry closing on him.  At this point, we had accomplished our play test goals and had a clear winner, so we called the game and set up our second play test.

The second game was a play test of Greg’s Falklands supplement.  After we cleaned up I realized that I didn’t take any pictures.  Greg has ordered a platoon each of British and Argentinians for the Falklands, but for this play test we used his UNIT troopers from his Dr. Who games for British and my WWII US for Argentinians.  The terrain was mostly barren and rocky.  We used Top Malo as the play test scenario.  As the Falklands war is much more like WWII than the Napoleonic Wars are, there were fewer optional rules to test.  We tested the new weapons for the Falklands, and we tested rules for night fighting.  According to Greg’s research the Argentinians had better night vision than the British, but the British employed them better.  Greg’s rules seemed to reflect this well.  By this time, Zeb had had to leave, so we had the four member of our club with the most notoriously cold dice facing each other in the dark.  In the real battle the British set the Top Malo house afire with M72 LAWs, but Chris and I got “out of ammunition” results with most of our sections when we tried to use our LAWs, meaning that we ran out of them.  With the Argentinians having better night vision, and our LAWs depleted, we had no choice but to advance to close range across largely open ground.  The results were predictable.  Greg and Duncan soundly defeated us; although, Chris made excellent use of his M203 grenade launchers to soften them up.  Sorry I don’t have any pictures to show, but with all the surrogates for figures and terrain, it wouldn’t have looked very Falklands-like to purists.

It was a successful day.  I think we’ll have the Napoleonic supplement ready to share with a slightly wider group of play testers in a few weeks.  Greg and I need to think a little more about night fighting, but the basic concept we employed seemed to be okay.  I hope to schedule another play test day to focus on Iraq and Afghanistan and perhaps another Falklands or Napoleonic test.  We had hoped to have The Falklands done before Salute, but the real world has gotten in the way.

After a few weeks of coordination, I am excited to announce that I have teamed with Sally 4th to make Combat Patrol(TM): WWII more easily available in the UK and Europe.

Sally 4th is the maker of quality wargaming terrain, including their photo textured buildings.

 Potential customers in the UK and Europe complained that the price of shipping one set of cards nearly exceeded the price of the set of cards.  Chris Abbey at Sally 4th kindly reached out, and after a little back and forth, we determined that we could make the game available with a UK printer through his Web site for about the same price as they are available from DriveThru Cards but without the high cross-ocean shipping charges.

Lest there be any confusion, the rules remain available through DriveThru as well as Sally 4th.  I am very happy with the support and service from DriveThru, and they produce the kind of high-quality, professional cards I wanted for Combat Patrol.  Sally 4th will provide the same service and quality on their side of the ocean.

Potential UK and European customers, please check out Sally 4th’s Web site and order your copy of Combat Patrol(TM).

As has been our tradition since 2008, I hosted a New Year’s Eve gaming event at my house for members of the Harford Area Weekly Kreigspeilers.  We began at about 3:30 in the afternoon with a 14-player GASLIGHT free-for-all set in Egypt.  My New Year’s Eve pulp games typically feature Duke Morrison and his buddies (“Wrench” Web, “Boats” Morgan, and “Struts” McPherson), often trying to rescue Gianna Nannini or her genius scientist father, Dr. Serafini Nannini.  This year was the same, with the added bonus of Indiana Jones, Salla, Short Round, and Marion hunting for artifacts.  A hapless archaeologist had uncovered several valuable and mystical artifacts in a remote pyramid near two Egyptian desert towns.  Once news leaked out, Nazis, Duke, Indy, Russians, Turks, Indians, Highlanders, Australians, mercenaries, and Arabs all converged on the area with competing goals of either capturing the artifacts or ensuring they stayed in the valley.  In addition, Sergeants Cutter, MacChensey, and Ballentine leading a group of Indian infantry sought to rescue the colonel’s daughter.  The sailors and others also heard a rumor of a lost keg of rum being hidden in one of the towns and had an objective of capturing this rare and valuable shipboard commodity.  A renegade group of French Legionaries had the mission of blowing up the platypus idol (Why?  How cares?  It was fun.).  Finally, a secret Papal group, the Order of the Blessed Crucifix, had the mission to retain possession of a religious relic with mystical properties.

You can imagine that with all these competing missions the game was a wild and woolly affair, just the kind of light hearted romp you want on New Year’s Eve.

The first two turns didn’t see a lot of shooting.  I deliberately set groups with competing goals far enough apart that they needed to move a little first.  One player with two units (cultists and Indians) got the missions of his two forces confused, so the cultists began firing erroneously on the Germans defending their flying wing on turn 2.  It did make for a lot of excitement.  The German defenders included a handler for a pack of guard raptors.  These quickly made a snack of a group of US soldiers, but then the cultists began blazing away at the remaining German defenders.

There were two towns on the table, an “older” one (made of Miniature Building Authority buildings) and a newer one (made from Crescent Root buildings).  The newer town didn’t see a lot of action.  The Order of the Blessed Crucifix (OBC) brothers were hidden in one of the buildings.  After a brief skirmish between a group of Arabs and the OBC, the Arabs got bloodied and decided to focus on other objectives.  The Americans who started in the village headed for the German flying wing.  The Gestapo (right of the picture above) bypassed the town to try to kill or capture Duke Morrison.

There were four groups of Nazis, each with slightly different but not opposing missions.  The Nazi cavalry with submachine guns entered the older town, battled for a while, then went to help the She Wolves maintain control of three of the four artifacts they had “acquired” from the archeologist.

A group, calling themselves (inappropriately) the Girly Girls, had the mission to settle and old (romantic?) score with Duke Morrison.  I say “inappropriately,” because the group was composed of tough-as-nails women like Lara Croft.  They decided to steal a truck in order to get to Duke’s entourage more quickly.  This began a major kerfuffle in the village that eventually involved Arabs, Nazis, Indians, and the “Sergeants Three.”  The Girly Girls eventually sped out of town with a truck.  Later in the game, they made it to Duke Morrison, but by then the Gestapo had incapacitated him, and the Russians were dragging his body off the table.

Meanwhile the French Foreign Legionaries and their Wild Bunch mercenaries made their way toward the platypus idol.  They stole one truck easily enough, but then they got greedy and tried to steal a second one.  They thought a Model T on the table had just a single Arab driver and attacked it, only to discover it was full of Arab soldiers.  In the ensuring melee, all of the Legionaries attacking the car were killed.

While this was going on, the She Wolves easily “acquired” three of the four artifacts from the archeologist, but then inherited the pyramid’s curse and were attacked by a mummy.  Despite his excellent Save number, the mummy was eventually vanquished.  He took down two She Wolves and two U.S. soldiers before turning into dust.  The She Wolves then spent the rest of the game holding out against enraged dock workers (commanded by “Boats” Morgan) and U.S. soldiers (commanded by “Crusty” Philpott).  Toward the end of the game, the Nazis on raptors provided reinforcements for the She Wolves, Arabs fired at everyone, and the Foreign Legion showed up to plant explosives on the platypus idol.

Duke Morrison began the game in a building with a truck parked next to it.  The cards didn’t come up in Duke’s favor, so he immediately had to fight a group of Arabs who were trying to steal the truck.  While Duke knocked off many of the Arabs, eventually one drove off with the truck.  His victory was short lived, because the Wild Bunch jumped on it and eventually killed the driver and hijacked the truck themselves.  The Foreign Legion used this truck to transport themselves and their explosives to the platypus idol to complete their mission.

So, how did all the carnage end?  Duke Morrison was incapacitated with the Russians and Girly Rights fighting over his limp body.  Indy, Salla, and Short Round were eaten by Nazi guard raptors while Marion fled into an oasis to hide.  The Cultists retained control of Gianna Nannini in the oasis near the flying wing and were preparing to sacrifice her.  Someone had crushed one of the artifacts by driving a truck over it.  Most of the Arabs were dead, as were the majority of the Nazis, sailors, and soldiers.  The Indians rescued the colonel’s daughter.  The Highlanders and Australians had mopped up the remaining defenders around the flying wing and had it firmly in their control.  The Golden Skull, a mysterious Nazi leader, was dead.  The French successfully blew up the platypus idol, but the explosion killed most of the remaining Legionaries.  The big winners (with 30 victory points) were the OBC, who held onto their religious artifact and did enough damage early in the game to the Arabs in the new village so that no one thought to attack them the rest of the game.  The U.S. soldiers (aligned with Duke Morrison) were the big losers, with negative 57 victory points.

The game was a hoot.  It lasted just over three hours, with everyone fully engaged throughout.  We had one player who had never even seen tabletop miniatures before, but he seemed to have an excellent time.

After putting away the pulp figures, Kurt ran another GASLIGHT game on the same terrain.  Traditionally New Year’s Eve gaming sessions have included a Santa Claus game.  This year Kurt ran a game that featured Santa, his Elves, Moonraiser’s Marauders (misfit toys who parachute in with umbrellas), Rudolph, Yukon Cornelius, teddy bears, and others launching a raid on the stronghold of the evil goblins who have repeatedly attacked the North Pole in previous years.

The Santa forces had launched their raid to rescue a bunch of snowball throwing kids and carolers who had been captured by the Goblins.  I was a goblin defender and held on reasonably well, having defeated a teddy bear unit, their artillery, a bunch of elves, and most of a unit of fish-throwing penguins before losing my last goblin.  Since all the defenders had been destroyed, Kurt determined that Santa and his forces could search all the buildings and free the prisoners at their leisure, so the game was a resounding victory for Santa.

We finished the evening with a game of Five Year Mission (a cooperative Star Trek dice and card game) and a strange game of Red Dragon Inn.  We play this game frequently, but this time, a couple of players had a lot of gambling cards while most of us did not.  After two rounds of gambling, and before I even took my first turn, only four of the original 12 players were still in the game.  Tank (with the beard in the picture below) eventually bested my daughter to win the game.

As is also HAWKs tradition, soon after midnight we old fogies poop out.  By 1 AM everyone had gone home, ahead of the bar-closing traffic.  It was a fun evening and a nice way to ring in the new year while avoiding crowds and slobbering drunks.

 

 

As is the HAWKs holiday custom, Duncan hosted a game at his house last night.  He has been hosting a game sometime on or about Christmas and/or New Year’s Eve, depending on how the holidays fall in the week for some years.  This year he chose to use Combat Patrol for a semi-reprise of one of his WWI 28mm scenarios.

In the scenario, we Germans had gained a small foothold across the canal (to the right of the picture above), and our mission was to expand that hold and push the British off the table.  There wasn’t enough time to actually push every Brit off the table, but Duncan said capturing the bridge pictured, the church in the background, and the other buildings around the courtyard would be evidence that we were achieving our mission.  While we initially outnumbered the British, we expected them to be reinforced at some point in the game.

Duncan’s figures were mounted for another system and were mostly mounted in pairs.  This occasionally created some issues tracking wounds and figuring out how to represent some morale effects, but in general it worked fine.  The buildings were a mix of manufacturers, including Grand Manor, Old Glory, and Miniature Building Authority.  I think the table was very nice.  As with all games involving a large number of buildings, there was some effort involved with getting figures in an out of the various floors of the buildings.

In Combat Patrol (which was written for World War II) squads are generally broken into two or three teams (depending on the country), which are the atomic unit of the game.  Duncan treated each early WWI squad as the atomic element.  I was a little worried at first that letting then men fire at the same time would either slow the game and/or prove too deadly to one side if the other got advantageous activation card draws early in the game.  The Combat Patrol mechanics didn’t seem to bog down with those large atomic elements, and the dense terrain with lots of protection seemed to mitigate the deadliness of fire.  In general, I’d say the rules worked fine for this historical period.

In addition to a platoon of infantry, I was assigned a Minenwerfer.  I only got to fire it twice, because of difficulty of my spotter being able to see targets and the slow reload time.  My first shot did some damage to British infantry ahead of Geoff’s advance, but it drifted a bit and caught some of Geoff’s men in the blast as well.  The second shot took the roof off a building in the courtyard, doing a lot of damage to Don’s men inside, but not before Don took out one of my advancing squads (to be described later).

The onus was on the Germans to advance, so while Geoff engaged Rob in a bloody firefight, I advanced through the alley and into the courtyard of a British held building.  In the next couple of activations, I pushed into the first floor.  The doorway was defended by just Rob’s platoon leader as most of the men in the building were on the upper floors where they had better fields of fire.  I eventually captured the first two floors and was ready to assault the third floor when we ended the game.  Aided by Geoff softening up Rob before I got there, I only lost half a squad in taking the building.

Meanwhile, Dave advanced his platoon across the canal at the German-held foot bridge and moved into position to pass me and continue the advance.

I know there was a LOT of activity on the other side of the table, but I was focused on my side.  I know that Kurt’s field gun and machine-gun silenced the British gun.  Also Eric eventually got some good long-range shots against our company commander who was observing the fight from a rubbled building, forcing him to seek cover.  Eventually the reinforcements arrived from that end of the table.  They didn’t have a major impact on the game, because the German attack was pretty well spent by the time they arrived.

We needed to keep advancing toward the church.  While I was busing in hand-to-hand combat with Rob, Geoff advanced two of his squads up the alley to the right of the picture (above).  That had me advancing up the street in the center of the pictures.  I thought that Dave and Kurt had silenced the British in the building on the other side of the courtyard, because I didn’t see any fire coming out of it.  Not so.  As I advanced up the street, I was cut apart by Don.  I eventually lost four men and accrued eight morale markers.  On my second morale check, the remainder of my elite squad of pioneers ran off the table.

In retaliation, I dropped a minenwerfer shell on Don’s building.  It took out the roof and wounded many of his men on the top floor.  About this time, it was getting late and all of us old guys were getting tired, so we called the game a convincing British victory.

Combat Patrol worked really well for early WWI, with a few scenario-specific and period-specific modifications that Duncan made to give it an earlier feel.  For instance in the basic rules for WWII, any infantryman can re-man a machine-gun, but we thought that in 1914, not all infantryman would have been trained on this new-fangled weapon.  Also, he used the larger squads, which gave the units a bit of an unwieldy feel compared to the more nimble teams of WWII.  The game was a success and great fun.

 

I ran five games at Fall In and helped Dave run another game, so I didn’t have as much time to wander around and take pictures as I usually try to do.    Below are some pictures of games that I and other HAWKs ran.

I ran a 10mm Fate of Battle game of the battle at Reichenbach in May 1813.  This was a scenario I found on the Web.  I was looking for a good six-player game.  I wasn’t sure I would get too many players at 0900 on Friday, but the game was full.  The French outnumbered the Russians 2:1 in infantry but had parity in cavalry.  While both sides had about the same number of batteries, the Russian guns were bigger and had greater ranges.  The scenario went very well, I think, and all the players had an exciting time — even the guy whose cavalry broke and ran as a result of the Russian guns on the central ridge.

Jim ran his ever popular six-player Saga game in which the opposing sides are trying to gather loot from a small village.  I didn’t hear who won, but all the players were engaged and having fun.  A couple even showed up for another Saga game on Sunday morning.

Zeb ran a 28mm Winter War game using my old Beer and Pretzels Skirmish rules.  I’ve been busy with other projects, so I haven’t put BAPS on the table in quite some time.  It was nice to see this oldie but goodie in action again.  I heard that the Russian tank was knocked out early.  Zeb used the Winter War Kickstarter figures from Baker Company a few years ago.  Apparently he is one of the few people who actually received his figures.  I haven’t gotten mine, which is the only Kickstarter that has stiffed me.

The HAWKs ran a series of “urban” scenarios with different rules and set in different time periods all weekend.  All of the terrain came from Don’s collection.  Most of the buildings were Miniature Building Authority with a few Crescent Root ones.

Eric ran a Napoleonic game with his Continental System rules.

Dave ran a 28mm ancients game using Fate of Battle.  The scenario was a Roman Civil War battle with the potential for auxiliaries to change sides during the game.

Duncan and I set up the same scenario to be run twice, once with Command Decision and once with Look, Sarge, No Charts: WWII.  The scenario was written for Command Decision, so I had to interpret the order of battle.  It was interesting to see how Command Decision and Look, Sarge approach the same issues from different perspectives but achieve similar results.  The scenario, The Ride of the Wielkopolska Brigade, had German armor trying to hold a town against Polish cavalry.  All this German infantry was on the other side of the table and didn’t arrive until late in the game.  This made it very difficult for Duncan’s tanks and AT guns to hold out against determined cavalry action.

Chris ran his Bear Yourselves Valiantly Lizardman Island game

Chris and I helped Dave run a double blind game of Creighton Abrams rushing to relieve Bastogne.  He used Look, Sarge, No Charts: WWII.  The spotting rules for LSNC really lend themselves to double blind games.  After the convention, I received an Email from one of the players thanking Dave for such an exciting and suspenseful experience.  I really enjoy double blind games, but they take twice as much terrain and several game masters to pull them off.

Tank ran his impressive-looking ancient game using Bear Yourselves Valiantly.

One of the urban games featured goblins and other bad guys attacking Santa’s workshop.  This one attracted young gamers as well as a few moms.

There were many other great games in the HAWKs room that I neglected to photograph.  Greg won an award for his Dr. Who game on the urban table.  Mike and Patrick Byrne ran a couple of Force on Force modern games.  Geoff ran his ever-popular Lego pirates game.  Dave ran a 25mm fantasy game. Eric ran his fantasy Blood and Swash game Sunday morning while I was running my Roman Circus chariot race game.  I had a pretty good convention.  All of my games were full, and the players seemed to have a good time.

 

I have a number of partially completed items on the painting table, but nothing new to show.  I did have a thought yesterday that I felt I would share with both readers of this blog.  🙂

I got a recent Pulp update from Beasts of War (http://www.beastsofwar.com).  Actually the update was Pulp, Punk, Horror, and Weird — dominated by the latter three and light on the first.  As I was perusing the Email update, I wondered, “When did it all get so dark?”  New releases of rules and figures seem to be focusing on the dark side of Pulp — daemons, vampires, daemons, zombies, more daemons, etc.  The stuff hitting the market these days makes Lovecraft look like Charles Schultz.

I guess I like my pulp lighter than the current tastes:  Duke Morrison and his buddies, “Wrench” Web,” “Boats” Morgan, Professor Nannini, Sergeant Preston, and others working to foil the insensate evil of the nameless “Eastern Menace,” Nazi Zeppelin troopers, etc.  I like bigger than life, barrel-chested, steely eyed killers of men and small fur-bearing animals locked in struggles to rescue beautiful ingenues, recapture stolen scientific marvels, or mystical devices.  I don’t much care for daemons, devils, and zombies cluttering up my pulp action; although, I do play the occasional zombie game.  My pulp is the Maltese Falcon, the Saturday morning serials, Flash Gordon, The Thin Man, Lives of the Bengal Lancers, the Real Glory, the Drums, The Four Feathers, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alan Quartermaine, just about anything John Wayne ever did, etc.  These are lighthearted adventures with clear heroes and villains.

Similarly, Victorian science fiction seems to be getting hijacked by the darker steam punk cum post apocalyptic craze.  Who wants VSF troopers in gas masks?  Apparently many.  I prefer bold, perhaps xenophobic, arrogant, and proselytizing, adventurers venturing into unknown worlds where they battle native tribes, prehistoric creatures, alien beings, and other European powers battle for control of resources in The Great Game.  I know none of that is politically correct these days, but as much as we want to pretend the colonial period never happened, it did.  And in most cases colonization of Africa was done by honorable men — by the standards of their day — attempting noble deeds as they saw them.

So clearly gaming can be what anyone wants it to be:  dark or light, ultra high resolution or highly abstract, fast or slow.  For me, though, I like my games to be a little lighter than the current trend in the hobby seems to be — at least judging by newly released games, rules, and figures.  Clearly I remain out of step with the rest of the hobby.

How do you like your pulp?

Yesterday, the HAWKs hosted our Barrage gaming day in Northern Maryland.  We had a record turnout, a Flames of War Tournament, a L’Art De La Guerre tournament, and lots of fun.  Below are some pictures from the day’s gaming.

One of the highlights of Barrage was seeing an old buddy Ma’k Morin.  He brought his wife and daughter to Barrage.  It was the first time I had seen him in almost 20 years, even though we have kept in contact via Email and phone calls.  It was great to game with him again, and I think his family enjoyed it too.